Apos
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bl...e_day_ii_3.html
Oh George Allen, we hardly new ye.
Macaca, as it turns out, happens to be an obscure racial slur that somehow popped into the head of this guy who's had several problems with race in the past. In this video, it's being directed at an Indian kid who is doing "tracking" for Allen's current Senate opponent, James Webb.
It seems like no matter how you spin this, Allen comes off looking terrible. Even if you completely buy the explanation that he was trying to say that the kid had a mohawk (which he sort of did), the whole "welcome to america, welcome to the real virginia" bit just doesn't work when you are talking to a NATIVE VIRGINIAN. Especially when you yourself are NOT a native Virginian. It's the same sort of red-state superiority complex that's just become vile, and is vile especially when Allen is singling out a 20 year old minority Democrat in a crowd of white heavily partisan Republicans. That's it at best. At worst, it's him seeing a minority Democrat and basically implying that he and his are foriegners, unamerican, etc.
But unfortunately, the macaca thing isn't so easy to write off. Allen might be okay with the "obscurity" of the term if and only if it didn't work against him. You see, George Allen, who just happens to be half French Tunisian and speaks French fluently, just so happens to be one of the very few people who WOULD be likely to know the term macaca, given that it is obscurely used in that culture as a racial slur, and its hard to imagine him NOT having heard it growing up (especially given his questionable past on race issues) It's also a very common code term amongst white supremacists, but we'll give George the benefit of the doubt that THIS is not where it slipped out of his brain from.
Of course, Virginia's Republican blogosphere is frantically trying to find the right angle on this: Webb is desperate, it's just the libruls trying to put the white Southern man down as racist, yadda yadda yadda. My favorite is the claim that Allen was BAITED into it: I suppose the color of the kid's skin was so outrageous that it tricked Allen into a Freudian slip.
Unfortunately, for a guy who was once the front-runner for the Republican nod for President, this does not bode well for Allen. From a fumbling response to a too slow non-apology, he's proving even to other Republicans that he's something of a lightweight.
His excuses haven't worked out so great either. The mohawk thing never worked, and then he contradicted it anyway by saying that he didn't know why he used that word. And THEN someone from his campaign came out and said it was a mix of mohawk and "caca" and that Allen was really just calling the kid a s**thead. Like, that would be MUCH better... if it didn't contradict to the two other explanations and still not really make much sense OR preclude the possibility that it was also still a monkey slur.
And of course, none of it redeems the "welcome to America" nonsense, or the fact that despite Allen trying to pretend that Webb is some big city liberal, Webb's entire family comes from the area Allen claims Webb never visits, and the Siddarth kid actually staying with one of Webb's relatives!
Oh George Allen, we hardly new ye.
Macaca, as it turns out, happens to be an obscure racial slur that somehow popped into the head of this guy who's had several problems with race in the past. In this video, it's being directed at an Indian kid who is doing "tracking" for Allen's current Senate opponent, James Webb.
It seems like no matter how you spin this, Allen comes off looking terrible. Even if you completely buy the explanation that he was trying to say that the kid had a mohawk (which he sort of did), the whole "welcome to america, welcome to the real virginia" bit just doesn't work when you are talking to a NATIVE VIRGINIAN. Especially when you yourself are NOT a native Virginian. It's the same sort of red-state superiority complex that's just become vile, and is vile especially when Allen is singling out a 20 year old minority Democrat in a crowd of white heavily partisan Republicans. That's it at best. At worst, it's him seeing a minority Democrat and basically implying that he and his are foriegners, unamerican, etc.
But unfortunately, the macaca thing isn't so easy to write off. Allen might be okay with the "obscurity" of the term if and only if it didn't work against him. You see, George Allen, who just happens to be half French Tunisian and speaks French fluently, just so happens to be one of the very few people who WOULD be likely to know the term macaca, given that it is obscurely used in that culture as a racial slur, and its hard to imagine him NOT having heard it growing up (especially given his questionable past on race issues) It's also a very common code term amongst white supremacists, but we'll give George the benefit of the doubt that THIS is not where it slipped out of his brain from.
Of course, Virginia's Republican blogosphere is frantically trying to find the right angle on this: Webb is desperate, it's just the libruls trying to put the white Southern man down as racist, yadda yadda yadda. My favorite is the claim that Allen was BAITED into it: I suppose the color of the kid's skin was so outrageous that it tricked Allen into a Freudian slip.
Unfortunately, for a guy who was once the front-runner for the Republican nod for President, this does not bode well for Allen. From a fumbling response to a too slow non-apology, he's proving even to other Republicans that he's something of a lightweight.
His excuses haven't worked out so great either. The mohawk thing never worked, and then he contradicted it anyway by saying that he didn't know why he used that word. And THEN someone from his campaign came out and said it was a mix of mohawk and "caca" and that Allen was really just calling the kid a s**thead. Like, that would be MUCH better... if it didn't contradict to the two other explanations and still not really make much sense OR preclude the possibility that it was also still a monkey slur.
And of course, none of it redeems the "welcome to America" nonsense, or the fact that despite Allen trying to pretend that Webb is some big city liberal, Webb's entire family comes from the area Allen claims Webb never visits, and the Siddarth kid actually staying with one of Webb's relatives!
